TELEGRAM TO V. A. ANTONOV-OVSEYENKO

Written:Written on April 25, 1919Published:First published in 1942 inLenin Miscellany XXXIV.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      page383.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Antonov,KievCopy to Rakovsky, Podvoisky, Kamenev

Ihave received your code message, and also your scheme
for dividing the Southern Front and the Ukrainian Front.
For the first I thank you, for the second I rebuke you for
playing at
independence.[1]Send the Ukrainian units to
capture Taganrog without fail, immediately and at all
costs. Telegraph.

[1]Realisingthe tremendous significance of the struggle for the
Donets coalfields, the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) and Lenin
repeatedly instructed the commanders of the Ukrainian Front and
the Ukrainian Soviet Government to assist the Southern Front.
But some of the military leaders of the Ukraine (N. I. Podvoisky,
V. A. Antonov-Ovseyenko and others), prompted by narrow, local
interests, held up the transfer of troops to the Donets sector.
Antonov-Ovseyenko, Commander of the Ukrainian Front, demanded
that the lines of demarcation between the Ukrainian Front and the
Southern Front in the Donets Basin should be revised, and that the
bulk of the forces operating in this area should be placed under his
command, and refused to recognise the major importance of the
Donets sector, claiming that the Ukrainian Front was confronted
by more important tasks in the Western and Southern Ukraine.
Lenin rejected his proposal.